[TYPES] Towards Sustainable Open Access: thoughts on the ACM OPEN transformative plan

[Michael Hicks]

Hi all.

This email, with a small bit of editing/link-adding, has now been turned
into a blog post at PL Perspectives, the SIGPLAN blog. Please add your
thoughts there!

https://blog.sigplan.org/2020/01/14/what-is-a-sustainable-path-to-open-access/

Thanks, Roberto, for your thoughts about this issue!

-Mike


On Sun, Jan 12, 2020 at 4:49 PM Roberto Di Cosmo <roberto at dicosmo.org>
wrote:

> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list
> ]
>
> Dear all,
>       the strong reaction to ACM signing the infamous letter from the 135
> institutions
> <
> https://presspage-production-content.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/1508/coalitionletteropposinglowerembargoes-864869.pdf
> >
> confirms
> that in our research area we are today largely in favour of Open Access: it
> is not surprising considering the tradition and values of our community.
> The good news is that after a quarter of a century of declarations,
> discussions, and little progress, powerful forces are now setting tight
> deadlines in order to finally trigger a real transition on a global scale.
>
> In Europe, Plan S <https://www.coalition-s.org/> has been a strong
> political move, pushing a coalition of funding agencies to force 100% open
> acces by 2021 on publications issued by research they fund; we can expect
> the US proposal that sparked the infamous letter will be an equivalent
> strong push forward in the US.
>
> Moving from a generic support of Open Access to a rational approach to
> *Sustainable
> Open Access*, though, is more complex than it seems.
>
>    - Should we go for "green open access
>    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access#Green_OA>", i.e. self
>    archiving the author version of our papers somewhere like we do in
> France
>    with the HAL platform (that still has a cost to cover)?
>    - Should we go for "gold open access
>    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access#Gold_OA>", aka "author
> pays",
>    maybe with some discount as per SIGPLAN sponsorship?
>    - And what about the "diamond" or "platinum" open access, where neither
>    readers nor authors pay (rest assured, somebody *does* pay, there is no
>    free lunch :-))?
>
> In any case, the big question is how costs should be covered, and here the
> debate seems mostly focused on the "right" price for publishing a single
> article (or APC, for article processing charge).
>
> The original version of the Plan S was strongly oriented towards gold open
> access ("author pays") with capped APC covered by institutions, not
> individuals, even if it was later clarified that green open access is also
> acceptable (this is called the "repository route" in II.2 of the
> implementation guidelines of Plan S
> <
> https://www.coalition-s.org/addendum-to-the-coalition-s-guidance-on-the-implementation-of-plan-s/principles-and-implementation/
> >
> ).
>
> Let me say upfront that I *strongly dislike* the APC approach, for a very
> simple reason that can be resumed in a statement that was attributed to a
> famous billionaire: "*If you want to get rich, build something that has a
> fixed cost and engenders variable income, and then get as many customers as
> possible*".
>
> There are indeed two main approaches to charging for an infrastructure
> (like a telephone network, a highway, the Internet or ... a publishing
> system):
>
>    - the first is to charge "per use", e.g. phone calls by the minute, data
>    per megabyte, etc., and this is how many big fortunes were made: these
>    infrastructures have usually a fixed cost that is independent on its
> use,
>    so when you have many users, the "variable income" quickly outweighs the
>    fixed cost, and you can buy a Ferrari, a private Jet, a skyscraper, etc.
>    - the second is to calculate the cost, add some reasonable margin for
>    investments, and divide the result among the users (aka "mutualising
>    costs"): this way, the more users come, the less the amount they need to
>    pay. No Ferrari, here :-)
>
> Framing the debate in terms of the value of an APC, even capped, falls
> squarely in the first approach, and IMHO is a Trojan horse for large
> publishing corporations to keep their double digit profit margins, or even
> increase them, in the transition to Open Access.
> And those double digit profits are money that is stripped away from our
> global research effort!
>
> The ACM OPEN plan (https://libraries.acm.org/subscriptions-access/acmopen
> ),
> on the other hand, falls squarely in the second approach, and is
> potentially a viable and virtuous one. I say *potentially* because, as many
> pointed out (and as stated in the text of the ongoing petition
> <
> https://www.change.org/p/association-for-computing-machinery-acm-support-open-access
> >),
> the calculations of the "cost" that is proposed to mutualise seem to
> include more than the publication process alone.
> But also because we should think at a *more global scale* and see what
> parts of the ACM publishing infrastructure is specific, and what part
> should be mutualised with other entities, bringing the overall cost down.
> More clarification is needed, but the recent second letter from ACM
> leadership
> <https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/about/acm-letter-to-ostp.pdf>
> lets us hope that ACM is able to listen to its members.
>
> In any case, it's important in this debate to have a clear sustainability
> plan, and analyze all the costs involved. On the one hand, one should not
> add to the bill costs unrelated to the publishing infrastructure. On the
> other hand, one must refrain from thinking that there is no cost apart from
> our own work as researchers/reviewers/editors/pc-chairs: even simply
> maintaining an online archive for the long term has a real, uncompressible
> cost, that we usually do not see until we have to actually run one
> [disclosure: I'm running one now <https://www.softwareheritage.org> :-)].
>
> All the best
>
> --
> Roberto
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
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>             (on leave at INRIA from IRIF/University Paris Diderot)
>
> Director
> Software Heritage                https://www.softwareheritage.org
> INRIA
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